Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Big Switch' Big Tap Monitoring Fabric 4.5 Aims for Security and Visibility

Big Switch Networks released the latest version (4.5) of its Big Tap Monitoring Fabric 4.5, delivering new security monitoring and visibility features, including inline/out-of-band deployment, flow-level granularity, and advanced analytics.

Big Tap is a 1G/10G/40G network visibility fabric that leverages software defined networking (SDN) principles and high-performance ODM or Dell Open Networking switches to provide scalable data center wide monitoring.

“With the release of Big Tap 4.5, we add the ability to interoperate with more partner products, giving the end user comprehensive monitoring and security capabilities they desire, all while providing huge CapEx and OpEx reductions,” said Prashant Gandhi, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy at Big Switch. “With Big Tap’s high-value SDN software powering open, high-performance Ethernet switches, customers can now combat cyber threats in a pervasive manner while future-proofing their monitoring infrastructure for scale and programmability.”

Key features of Big Tap 4.5:

  • In-line deployment mode, in addition to out-of-band (enablement of DMZ deployment)
  • Service chaining with in-line mode (allows multiple security tools to be processed in a chain, as specified by user-defined policy)
  • sFlow generation (centrally configured flow generation on monitoring fabric)
  • Enhanced visibility for security (DNS tracking, DHCP tracking)
  • Header stripping for MPLS (support service provider WAN monitoring)
  • Configurable hash setting for granular load balancing of tools (allows tool elasticity)

http://www.bigswitch.com/